


little by little it's the finest meal

by dgalerab



Series: a fix-it, but more [5]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: An Outsider's Look Into The Losers Club, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Patty Finds Out About Pennywise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 22:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21483595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dgalerab/pseuds/dgalerab
Summary: Getting to know Stanley Uris is a several step process.Patty Blum is absolutely not prepared for the end of the journey.
Relationships: Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Series: a fix-it, but more [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1513076
Comments: 30
Kudos: 355





	little by little it's the finest meal

**Author's Note:**

> idk man i just wanted to give stan a really amazing girlfriend, sue me

In retrospect, Patty Blum decides that meeting Richie Tozier is a three part process.

The first is when she first starts working at the bar and Richie is straddling the bar and shouting, “It’s called a cock-tail. That’s two words for dick,  _ two,  _ and you’re telling me a man ordering that shit for a woman doesn’t  _ immediately  _ wanna get laid?” at another one of their coworkers while very suggestively straddling the bar.

The second is when she drops an entire box of glasses on her first week and while she’s wondering how she’ll keep from crying and/or getting fired, Richie comes running, nearly shoves her off her feet pushing her away from the mess and then leans against the shelves with the cheekiest faux innocent look for when their boss makes it in.

Their boss takes one look at Richie, determines his obvious “guilt,” and sighs. “It’s coming out of your paycheck, Tozier. Clean it up.”

Richie salutes their boss and immediately leans down to start picking up glass.

“Thanks,” Patty says, squatting down to help. “I can pay whatever he…”

“Nah,” Richie says. “My roommate budgets for me fucking up at work every so often. Just buy me a beer sometime.”

She nods. “Still, I owe you one.”

“Just try not to fall in love with me, Pattycakes,” Richie says, and winks at her.

The third and most explanatory time is when Richie accidentally walks in on her kissing her girlfriend at the time goodbye in a part of the bar she’d thought was empty at that time of the morning.

Richie says, “Oh, Jesus,” and nearly walks into a wall trying to cover his entire face with his hands, like maybe he can undo the invasion of privacy if she can’t see him.

Patty sighs and says her goodbyes, seeing the girl out before returning to Richie, who’s wide-eyed and cleaning a glass like it’s the only thing that exists on the planet.

“This isn’t gonna be a problem, is it?” Patty asks. She’s been around Richie enough that she’s pretty sure it won’t be, but it’s always hard to tell.

“No!” Richie nearly shrieks. “Um. No. No, um… I mean, me too, right?”

“You like girls too?” Patty tries.

“No!” Richie yelps. “No the other… I mean not a  _ lesbian,  _ but…” He dances slightly like he’s got hot coals in his shoes and lets out a small whimper, and she suddenly  _ gets _ it.

“You’re gay?” she asks.

He nods like she’s released him from a curse. “Yeah. I’m gay.”

She relaxes. “I’m bi, actually.”

“Oh,” Richie says, looking slightly green. “Cool.” Then he laughs, sort of awkward and not entirely humorous. “You’re the first person I’ve come out to.”

“No one else knows?” she asks, wincing a little.

“Oh, no no,” Richie says.  _ “Plenty _ of people know. My boyfriend, for starters, and also my entire hometown.” He smiles bitterly. “I was sort of violently dragged out of the closet despite my best efforts to stay buried there.”

She hisses, not sure what to say to that.

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to be a bummer, just…” He shrugs, smiling for real. “Thanks for being my first actual… you know.”

She nods. “It’s an honor.” She tallies up all the things she knows about him and chances an additional, “It went  _ really  _ well.”

“Oh, fuck you, Pattycakes,” Richie says, laughing, and then everything is back to normal.

**

Patty only needs to meet Eddie Kaspbrak all of one time.

He comes to see Richie’s show.

The jokes are bad. They’ve got nothing of Richie in them, and while Richie delivers them with every fiber of exuberance in his body, the jokes are still bad.

She’s seen Richie’s friends before, coming and going, and she knows which table they’re at.

She notes, even as she’s still working and taking orders, that most of his friends know the same, but only one of them looks  _ absolutely blood-boilingly furious. _

She wonders about it up until she overhears them yelling in the backroom after the bar is empty and she’s locking up so she can clean in peace.

“You didn’t do the British gentleman or the southern gal or whatever the fuck you were doing last week with that bit about the mustache and… and… What the  _ fuck _ is wrong with you? You’re just telling some jackass’ shitty jokes?!” the still-unknown-rage-monster shouts.

“I mean, either way I’d be telling some jackass’ shitty jokes,” Richie replies.

“See?!” Grumpy yells. “You’re fucking  _ hilarious,  _ Rich, why the  _ fuck _ would you not tell your own jokes?”

“Half of them would be about you! What am I supposed to say, huh? Oh, yeah, I live with two of my middle school friends in my two bedroom apartment, haha, don’t do the math there, nothin’ gay about it, wink wink?!”

“So say I’m your girlfriend!”

“You want me to call you a girl?!”

“If it means you’re fucking telling your own goddamn jokes, then yes! This is what you’ve been doing your whole life and you have a chance to put it out there for the whole world and make a  _ career  _ out of it and you’re not even going to do it as yourself?! Fuck that!”

There’s a long moment of silence, and Patty clears her throat.

Richie and his boyfriend look around at her.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” the boyfriend snarls, and Patty genuinely wonders if he’d resort to violence if she turned out to be a homophobe in this moment.

“Whoa, whoa, down boy,” Richie says, patting his shoulder. “Eddie, this is Patty Blum. We  _ like  _ Patty Blum. No biting.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie says, but he settles down. “It’s nice to meet you, Patty. Richie mentioned you.”

He’s very gentle when he shakes her hand.

“I just wanted to let you know I’m cleaning up,” Patty says. “And that you’re very audible.”

“Sorry,” Eddie says. “I’m just…” He pinches the bridge of his nose.

“You’re right,” Patty says. She looks at Richie. “He’s right.”

“Is this a coup?” Richie says. “Fuck you guys.” But he’s blushing.

“Absolutely a coup,” she says. “And do the dishes.”

Richie sighs dramatically and goes to do the dishes.

“How old is that sponge?” Eddie says, trailing after him, radiating nervous energy like it doesn’t even bother him. “Jesus Christ, throw it out when it’s worn down like that. And you’re barely even using any soap.”

“You wanna get in here and do my job?” Richie gripes.

“If you have any gloves then yes, I will show you what the fuck you’re doing wrong,” Eddie snaps, and with that, Patty has a good enough idea about who Eddie Kaspbrak is.

**

She meets Stanley Uris many, many times.

Unfortunately, the first time is not a good time.

For starters, Patty is still in shock, so she opens with, “Hi, there’s a lot of blood.”

Which will eventually be funny, years in the future, but for now only gets met with a very cold, very tense, “Who is this?”

“Oh,” she says. “This is Patty.”

It’s slightly less cold, but still just as tense, “Patty  _ who?” _

“Patty Blum,” she says.

“Why are you calling me, Patty Blum?” the man on the other end of the line grits out.

“Are you Richie’s roommate?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“That’s why,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m calling Richie’s roommates,” she says. “That’s this number, right?”

_ “Yes,” _ the man says, very aggressively. “But  _ why _ are you  _ calling?” _

“Oh,” she says, “I don’t know any of his insurance information.”

At this point, the receptionist at the desk seems to register what’s happening her despite how busy she is, and says, “Sweetheart, give me the phone.”

Patty does.

“Mr. Tozier cut his hand down the wrist with a broken glass. He’s in surgery now, but we need his insurance information. And if you could also bring some clean clothes for Ms. Blum here, I’m sure she’d appreciate it,” she says. “Yes, of course. Goodbye.”

Patty stares at her, and blankly gives her a thumbs up.

“You may want to sit down,” the woman says, and Patty does that too.

**

“And that’s not even mentioning the amount of bacteria that gets on a glass. Staph infections are extremely common in bar accidents and—”

Patty looks up at Eddie’s ranting, and that’s the first time she really sees her future husband.

“You must be Patty,” the stranger says, and at this point Patty isn’t quite as confused, but she does have a killer headache. She squints up at him.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Here,” he says, handing her plastic bag full of clothes.

“What glass?” Eddie shouts. “What kind of glass? Shot glass? Half pint? Fuck, what other kinds of glasses are there? Was it like a sliver or a clean break? Was it used or had it just been cleaned and also did it stay embedded and which part of the wrist and…”

“Just ignore him,” the stranger says. “Go get changed. And remember to wash your hands.”

“Okay,” she says.

“That’s all his blood!” Eddie yells at the stranger as she walks away. “Did you see her? That was all Richie’s blood! What if it hit an artery? Do you know how fast you can bleed out from an artery? He’s going to need stitches for sure and…”

By the time she comes back, Eddie’s still ranting, pacing back and forth, now babbling something about how, “He always picks glass up with his bare hands. I have told him a million times he’s going to cut himself and he still—!” while the stranger calmly fills out paperwork beside him.

“Hi,” she says. “You must have been the person I talked to on the phone.”

He looks up, quirking a brow. “I am.” He extends a hand. “Stan Uris.”

“Patty Blum,” she says, shaking his hand. “Sorry about… being so cryptic. I swear it wasn’t on purpose.”

“Well, it was certainly an experience,” he says dryly. “Eddie, does Richie have any allergies?”

“Fexofenadine,” Eddie says, then leaps right back into fretful and aggressive interrogation, cornering Patty to get a hand in her face. “How was he when he got here? Were you in the ambulance with him? Was he conscious?”

“Really out of it,” Patty says, “but yeah, he was still cracking jokes right up until they rolled him into surgery.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Okay.” He squats down beside Stan and rests his forehead against Stan’s knee to take deep, deep breaths.

Stan lets him for a moment, then shakes him off to return the papers to the receptionist. He sits back down, still calm. “He’ll be fine, Eddie,” he says, but she notices the way his jaw clenches.

“Thanks for the clothes,” she says. “The uh… women’s clothes didn’t fit, but…”

“I’m not surprised that Bev’s shorter than you,” Stan says. “I’m glad I brought some of Richie’s t-shirts just in case.”

She’s not going to ask if Bev is his girlfriend in the emergency room while he’s waiting to find out how his friend is doing, no matter how hot he is in his pressed collar and sweater.

Instead, she says, “No offense, but you’re not what I would have expected from Richie’s roommate.”

He smiles wryly. “That’s the opposite of an offense,” he says. “Richie’s been my best friend since kindergarten, so he’s grown on me. Like a rash.”

“Hey!” Eddie shouts. “He could be  _ dying.” _

“He’s not,” Stan says. “If Richie could die from a single glass mishap, we’d have lost him years ago.”

Eddie nearly punches him, and Stan doesn’t seem at all bothered by this fact.

**

Richie is very loopy when they finally get him out of the ICU. Eddie is still ranting at a nurse right up until they’ve left the building, alternating between coherent concerns - he’s a med student, apparently - and baffling, confused worries about anything from glass to air bubbles.

Stan keeps him from attacking the nurse and dryly smacks down Richie’s confused attempts at jokes, but he also buckles Richie into the backseat while Eddie yells at Richie and also kisses all over his face. Richie looks like the happiest guy on earth, and asks them where his glasses are at least thirty times. 

(They’re on his face.)

Patty somehow ends up going home with them, because it’s 4 in the morning and everyone seems to have forgotten they need to take a detour to her own place.

Eddie leads Richie to bed, and Patty finds herself in the kitchen with Stan.

“Sorry about… well, the entire apartment,” Stan says.

She looks around, and she’s too tired to really process all of it. “It’s certainly an apartment.”

He snorts. “Debatable. Would you like some food?”

“Oh,” she says. “Yeah, I haven’t eaten since this morning.”

“Everything’s kosher,” he says. “If that’s…?”

“Yes,” she says, relieved. “So you  _ are  _ Jewish?”

“Son of a rabbi,” he says, with a lopsided smile.

“Ouch,” she says. “That sounds terrible.”

He laughs. He’d seemed calm in the emergency room, but now she realizes he wasn’t calm in the least. His shoulders aren’t as square, his eyes are softer, and he smiles easily. “It was.” He gets out a box of leftovers and starts preparing two plates.

“So, you bartend,” he says, handing her a plate of spaghetti, “anything else?”

“I study animal sciences, actually,” she says. “I want to… study snails.” Which is such an icebreaker. Well done, Patty.

“Snails,” Stan repeats, then laughs. “I’ve always liked birds.” He gestures at the puzzles, pictures and little figurines around the apartment. “As you can see.”

“I can,” she says, laughing.

“In my defense,” Stan says, “a lot of them are from Richie. He likes to buy everyone literally every single trinket that makes him think of them, which is sweet, but also means I now look like a madman who thinks of nothing but birds all day.”

She grins. “What do you do?”

“I am studying accounting,” he says. “It’s riveting. Tell me about snails.”

And she does. For two hours. He listens to her intently the whole time and asks follow up questions, even though the sun is already coming up.

“Thanks for staying with Richie, by the way,” Stan says. “You could have gone home when we got there and you didn’t. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it whenever he wakes up properly.”

“Of course,” she says. “He’s a good guy.”

“I’m glad you see that behind his personality,” Stan mutters.

“It wasn’t actually that hard,” she laughs, “I got it pretty quick, but when he almost came out me as a lesbian it really hammered it home.”

Stan snorts. “A lesbian?”

“Yeah, he sort of saw me kissing another girl,” she says.

Stan stares at her for a moment too long, but he takes it gracefully. “Oh. Okay. Right.”

“I mean, I’m single now,” she blurts. “If you are.”

He cocks his head. “Excuse me?”

“I mean I’m single regardless,” she says. “But if you want to go on a date sometime, I think you’re really attractive and you just listened to me talk about snails for two hours, so…”

“Do you like bird watching?” Stan asks, smiling softly.

She grins. “I  _ love _ bird watching.” 

**

That happens to be stage one of getting to know Stan. The sweet, Jewish accountant who loves to sit and watch birds for hours and adores his weird, loud friends.

Stage two, frankly, is in bed.

The first time they’re making out in his bed instead of at her place, in order to avoid Richie and Eddie’s regularly scheduled madness, Stan stops and sighs in the middle of it. “Listen,” he says, “I don’t mean to be crass, but I’ve heard Richie and Eddie fuck very, very many times, and I’m honestly just unsure which is more important to me, vengeance or the fact that I never, ever want my best friend to listen in on me having sex, so I was hoping you’d be the deciding vote.”

“Oh, I believe in compromise,” she says, taking off her earrings. “Get off the bed, you’re too tall for this.”

He smiles, confused, but he slides off the bed and watches as she gets up and stands on the bed.

“Back in freshman year I thought I was straighter than I was,” she explains, “so my standards for men were lower than they should have been, you know?” He nods indulgently. “Anyway, I had a lot of disappointing sexual encounters where you never really know how weird they’re going to get if you don’t fake an orgasm, so…”

“Ah,” he says, “understandable.”

She nods sagely, then starts jumping on the bed with the best stage moaning she can manage.

After ten seconds, there’s a frantic knock on the door, and she stops.

“Yes?” Stan asks, grinning in glee.

“You’re a real dickhead,” Richie calls. “Message fucking  _ received. _ We’re going out for ice cream.”

“Thank you!” Stan calls back.

Patty sits down on the bed, very pleased with herself. “You’re welcome.”

They listen to the door slam and then Stan gets up, sighing like he’s being very put upon. “Well, I can’t disappoint after that,” he says. “I’m going to go steal some of their condoms and in the meantime you can think about how you want it.”

Which, Patty thinks, is an awful thing to say to a woman, because then she sits there, feet up against the headboard, trying to settle on a position.

Stan returns with a handful of condoms, and she raises a brow. “You planning to go a few times?”

“You never know,” Stan says.

“Oh, good, because I’m having trouble deciding,” she says.

“Hah,” Stan says, getting a pair of scissors and unwrapping one of the condoms with his teeth so he can start cutting it down the middle.

She stares at him. “Are you making a dental dam without even being asked?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says, like it never occurred to him that he  _ wouldn’t _ be eating her out.

“The list just got longer.”

**

(Richie and Eddie are home before they’re done, and when Patty manages to stumble out to the kitchen in Stan’s shirt, knobbly-kneed, to drink a half a gallon of water while Stan showers, Richie only looks at her and says, “I feel ya, sister,” and offers her a handful of chocolate almonds.)

**

Step who-knows-how-many of getting to know Stan is meeting his friends.

Mike and Bill fly in from LA for the summer, and they’re the sort of friends that she’d actually expect of Stanley the accountant. (She asks Stan if there’s something between them. Stan only says, “Please. I can’t do this again after Richie and Eddie,” and moves on.)

Ben is getting there, but he’s also dating Beverly Marsh, who, granted, Patty meets in close proximity to Richie, but who doesn’t seem like the sort of person Stan would befriend on his own.

She’s strong and loud and a little bit dangerous. (If Bev weren’t clearly madly in love with Ben and if Patty weren’t madly in love with Stan, she’d make Bev some very serious offers.)

But she and Stan get along just perfectly. In fact, all of them are thick as thieves, all so at ease with each other that Patty sometimes wonders if they spend all the moments they aren’t together, all seven of them, with a small part of themselves always on high alert. Like every moment where they don’t see the other six is a moment where some indescribable danger looms in the back of their minds.

The longer she watches them, the more clear it becomes that they all  _ know _ something, something only the seven of them know, and Patty starts to wonder.

**

“What are those scars on your face?” she asks, at some point. “They look just like the ones on Richie’s arm.”

Stan’s face shutters. She’s never seen him so icy. He takes off his glasses and turns off the light. “Good night,” he says, and rolls over so his back is to her.

**

Patty spends a lot of time together with Bev, just getting food and going to the park and talking about all the womanly stuff that Bev never gets to talk about in earnest surrounded by men. Bras, tampons and pads, walking home late at night, so on and so forth.

(None of them have any close friends outside of each other. They’re all friendly people, but they don’t hang out with anyone else of their own volition. Not a single one of them.)

Sometimes Richie comes along, so long as he knows when to shut up. Much to Patty’s surprise, he does. He’s currently getting them all takeout while Bev sits on a bench next to Patty and takes pictures of the park.

“Bev, can I ask a personal question?” Patty asks.

“Hit me,” Bev says.

“Stan and Richie both have these odd scars,” she says, “and Stan won’t talk to me about it. Did something happen to them?”

Bev lowers the camera, hands shaking. “Oh, hun,” she says, “I know it’s frustrating not to know, but if Stan doesn’t want to talk about it, I don’t know if it’s my place to say.”

“Richie said he was violently dragged out of the closet,” Patty says. “Does it have something to do with that?”

Bev chuckles, but it’s an acrid laugh. “Yeah. It really does. But it’s very complicated.”

Richie returns with a big paper bag of sandwiches. “What’s happening here?” he asks, grinning. “Bev, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I was just telling Patty that if Stan doesn’t want to talk about It, I’m not sure we should either,” Bev says. She says  _ It _ like it’s obvious what It is. Like they all are doing their best not to think about what It is in every moment of their lives.

Richie’s grin goes ashen.

“I just noticed the scars,” Patty says, apologetic.

“No worries, Pattycakes,” Richie says. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re better off not knowing.”

She doesn’t bring it up again.

**

They’re all afraid of clowns, Patty notes, after she sees Stan cover his eyes as a clown passing out balloon animals at the park and Richie and Bev genuinely try to hide behind Patty out of reflex when a street performer moves towards them.

There’s other fears, where they duck out of instinct, like they’d had to learn how to move fast, but they’re harder to place. Ben doesn’t care for fire. Bev asks Patty to stick with her in public restrooms, and not the way other women usually do. Richie doesn’t like marionettes and when she asks if he liked Street Fighter he winces and says, “I used to.”

When they go to museums, Stan stops in front of paintings with deformed faces and stares them down. “I hate it when people do that,” he says. “Take a face and make it something awful.”

“It’s art,” she says.

“And they’ve made it a monster,” he says, and drags her to the next room, gripping her tight like he’s genuinely scared of one of them getting hurt.

**

“I can’t keep it from you forever,” Stan says, about four months after she moves into their weird, broken apartment and forces them to hire a repairman and organizes all their trinkets by color in an attempt to make it at least  _ function _ without removing all of the character. “And I genuinely do want to be together with you forever.”

“Okay,” she says, sitting up. She has to admit, she’s curious. There’s so many awful pieces to this puzzle and she hasn’t the faintest how to put it all together. It has to be something terrible, she knows, but she wants to see it through to the end. “Whatever it is, I’m here for you.”

“Patty, I appreciate the thought,” Stan says, “but there is absolutely no way you’re prepared for what I’m about to tell you.” He stands up and paces back and forth a few times. “I realize it sounds clinically insane, and I swear, you can ask all my friends about this and they will say the same thing.”

“Okay,” she says, quite a bit warier now. “I don’t have to cross reference, I’ll believe you.”

“You won’t,” Stan says as he stops pacing and looks her in the eyes. “There was a demon clown haunting our hometown.”

She frowns at the wording. “Like, a clown who was evil?”

“No,” Stan says very firmly, “I mean it was an actual demon. It liked to be a clown, but it turned into other things, and then Its mouth would open up into hundreds and hundreds of teeth and It would eat children. It ate Bill’s little brother and nearly ate my face off and It tore Richie’s arm to shreds.”

“Okay,” Patty says. “I take it back. I do kind of need to cross reference.”

**

“Look,” Patty says, “it’s very common to mask traumatic experiences with different memories that can be kind of surreal, so if this is some delusion Stan has come up with to mask something else, I swear I won’t correct him.”

“No,” Eddie says, yawning. “It was a demon clown.”

“Shook me around by my mangled arm like a goddamn chewtoy,” Richie adds.

It’s very early in the morning, and they’re both very sleepy, but the casual way they say this is frankly terrifying. 

Patty looks back and forth between them. “I need to talk to the others too.”

“Mmkay,” Richie says. “But they’re gonna tell you the same thing.”

“Yeah, okay!” she says. “Yeah. That’s cool, but like… I need to… um…”

Richie shrugs, slumping against Eddie to doze off.

**

They all say the same thing.

The little inconsistencies are irrelevant. There’s some things they misremember, because it was years ago, and moments they weren’t together, and odd accounts of the alleged demon playing with their sense of reality, but they all say the same thing. They say it plaintively, like battle weary soldiers.

“There must have been something in the water,” she decides. “That would explain the hallucinations and the missing children could have just gotten lost following hallucinations. It was more likely in children because they get lost easier.”

“Then why were all of their bodies in the sewers?” Ben asks. “There were news stories about it.”

“Maybe it was one of those things that induces a very specific behavior,” she says. “Like, there’s a parasite found in cat urine that makes you want to cuddle cats? And it just drew people to the sewers. Like, some kind of pheromone.”

“Why every 27 years?” Bev asks.

“Geological shifts,” she says. “A biological element with a life cycle, I don’t know.”

“What tried to eat Stan’s face off?” Eddie asks. “And Richie’s arm?”

“Some animal, drawn there the same as the kids,” Patty replies.

“What animal has teeth like that?” Mike asks, gently.

“I don’t know, some kind of mutant… shark… thing?”

“Patty,” Richie says, scooting closer. “At this point… don’t you think it’d be easier to just accept the demon clown?”

She stares at him, rubbing her hand over her face. “Okay, then how do you know you killed it? For real this time?”

“No memory loss,” Bev says. “The first time I left, it entirely fucked up my brain. Now we all remember each other.”

“Okay, but… the first time you hurt it enough to shift the cycle,” she says. “What if this time you just hurt It enough that It had to drop that part of Its power and after 27 years of licking Its wounds, it’ll start a new cycle?”

They all look at her in abject terror.

“No,” Eddie says. “I mean… come on,  _ no, _ right?”

“Wait, 27 years from 1989 or 1992?” Richie asks. “Like, are we gonna be forty or forty-three?”

“Why is that important?” Stan shouts. “We are not going back to Derry. Ever.”

“Stan, it kills…” Bill starts.

“I fucking know what it kills!” Stan snarls, whirling on him. “We’re not going back to Derry, Bill! We’ve done  _ enough.” _

“Stan, come on,” Mike says.

“You know I’m right!”

“Yeah I’m with Stan here,” Richie says. “If It’s back, I’m out. I’ve said good fucking riddance to Derry.”

“Yeah, I don’t have shit to go back to there,” Eddie says. “And a lot to lose.”

“But…”

“No, Bill!”

They collapse into incomprehensible yelling until Bev sighs and gets up on the table. “Guys.  _ Guys!” _ she shouts. “It’s gone! We all felt it! We  _ know.” _ She sighs and looks at Patty. “No offense, but you weren’t there. We all felt it.”

“No, by all means,” Patty says, “I will be the first to admit that I don’t know what’s going on here.”

“It’s fooled us before,” Bill murmurs.

Slowly, Stanley lets out a breath, relaxing. “Not like this. It’s fooled us with fear. Not with contentment.”

Richie nods. “I don’t think it can act. It can mimic, but it’s not… like… good at it? It tried to be Eddie for a bit and it… well, at the time I was too freaked out to really think it through, but all of it was a little off.”

_ “What?” _ Eddie hisses.

“That’s true,” Ben offers. “It sort of teased me with Bev, but in retrospect it was… even when It was trying to give me something I wanted, it was… just wrong? It can’t get good things right.”

Bill chews at his lip.

“I’m very sorry about your brother,” Patty says quietly.

He looks up at her, surprised. “Oh. Yeah. Well. It was a long time ago.”

Richie reaches over and pulls him in for a one armed hug, and Stan softens, offering one of his own arms to join in.

“Wait, wait, back up,” Eddie snaps. “It tried to be me? What the fuck? You weren’t going to tell me this?”

“Yeah,” Bev says. “Ben, what the fuck?”

“Make a break for it, Haystack,” Richie says, and nearly knocks himself out trying to bolt and running into the couch instead.

There’s a lot of yelling, and it’s all very hard to follow.

**

“So,” Stan says. “Is this, like, a dealbreaker?”

Patty looks at him, Stanley the sweet, cute Jewish accountant with the weird friends, the bird watcher, the clown killer, soft and sharp and clever and brave in all the oddest ways, and says, “Like, the opposite of a dealbreaker,” she says. “But it’s going to take me a while to like… exist with this idea.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I get that.”

“So this is why you get all ominous around Picasso, huh?”

He laughs, slightly bitter. “Yeah.”

“I knew there was something off about you guys,” she murmurs. “I didn’t expect a killer clown monster, but…”

He laughs. “But Patty, if you’re all in,” he says, hiding a smile, “I need you to promise that if Bill somehow convinces the others to go back to Derry to go clownhunting again, you will help me fake my own death.”

“Stanley,” she chides. “That’s so mean.”

“Promise,” he demands.

“Fine, I will,” she says.

“Thank you,” he replies. “I really love you.”

She smiles. “I love you too, Stan Uris.”

**Author's Note:**

> all this time you all thought richie was my favorite character but in actuality it is stan and always has been (and richie would agree with me)
> 
> and yes i did reference that tumblr post because no stan is not dead in canon because i would be devastated beyond repair


End file.
